Bullock on speculation, farming and the ALC

Richard Bullock, the former chair of the Agricultural Land Commission, has never seemed fond of the spotlight, and he literally didn’t get a spotlight (or much lighting at all) when he spoke on the Richmond campus of Kwantlen Polytechnic University recently.

As the photos show, the hall’s attention was directed to the future of agriculture and land use in B.C., with a semi-circle of bovine stakeholders on the screen watching and waiting for us human British Columbians to do the right thing.

Similarly, there wasn’t much media coverage, with just one report showing up when I googled the event. Let’s hope that some of the various people recording the “Evening with Richard Bullock” will share their audio/video soon.

In the meantime, here are a few points I jotted down.

In a sort of theme statement, Richard Bullock emphatically stated, “We’ve got to take the speculative value out of farmland.” Of course, he took the speculation problem in the right direction as ALC chair, and then the provincial Bill to Kill the ALR (Bill 24) reversed the gains and worse, as discussed in the Bill 24 section of this blog.

When Richard Bullock spoke at length about the experience of farming, he emphasized this statement: “The toughest part of farming is the mental part.” There are so many implications when one reflects on it.

His dream, he said, is sufficiently wide respect for farmland “that the ALC should no longer be necessary.” Since he was speaking in Richmond, it’s too bad that Harold Steves was the only member of council who came. Some of his colleagues are quick to look for ways around the ALR when that suits their purposes. At present, Langford in the Capital Region seems to be the epitome of the problem, while (on the right track) Bowen Island treasures its bit of ALR.

When Richard Bullock was asked about his top three issues related to agriculture, he had to stop and think for a minute. He came up with something like this:

Educating about the importance of food

Respecting the land and water where we live

Enjoying and sharing the bounty that we have

The event had begun with a Salish prayer, and with that answer it seemed to draw to an end with a shared silent prayer or affirmation: Amen.

Update, August 12: The Vancouver Sun came out with a Richard Bullock article on today’s page C4 andonline here. It was said to be based on the KPU event and an interview. It reads to me as though too much of it came from fishing questions in the interview. To get the best information, one can’t beat being at a Richard Bullock presentation in person.